


Snake In The Grass

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: The Hokage's Mansion [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Ara being a snake, Attempted Murder, Attempted Rape, Bloodplay, Experimentation, Kidnapping, Orochimaru being badass, lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was taken. She didn't know by who. </p><p>What she did know was that she was a ten year old girl, drugged, stripped and chained. There were only so many things that these people would want with her. </p><p>She couldn't outfight them, even with her skill. That left her with only one option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snake In The Grass

 

There were only so many things that kidnappers wanted when they abduct a ten year old girl. 

Ara preferred not to think about it. 

* * *

The cave was cold, dark and wet. Not so good for when you're naked and partially reptilian. 

Ara shivered, chains clanking around her as if to mock her. There were twenty of them, she had counted. She could easily snap the chains, if she wanted to. Rock Lee's training was nothing if not complete, and she hid enough power in her scrawny frame to shock many people. However, her biology would not allow for her to get thicker. She was a snake, deep in her soul, and she embraced it. She had learned. Nearly six months, but she had learned. 

"You don't make much sound, do ya?" 

She simply blinked at him, then sneezed, a new wave of shivers wracking her frame. 

"Aww, cold darlin'? Let me help you warm up."

Ara rose to her feet, not too sick yet to stand. She gazed at him through her long net of hair. 

"Gonna work with me, huh? This is new. Gonna make you warm, darlin'."

She grabbed his wrist as soon as his fingertips brushed her shoulder. "No."

"Wha?"

She pulled him easily to the left, bringing her knee up to meet his stomach. She released him and stuck her hands to the wall with chakra. She pulled herself up on them and kicked out with both feet, shooting him into the opposite wall. She easily laid herself back down on the chilled stone and huddled close. Two other men came in within seconds on the deafening crack only to find their comrade curled against the opposite wall from their charge. 

"What the hell?"

"Did you do this, you little bitch?"

She didn't respond. She knew they had already made up their minds and there was no way that she could talk her way out of it. If anything, it made it worse for her to speak to them at all. She was waiting for the right moment, just as any good snake.

"You did, didn't you?"

"We'll just have to play with more than one at a time, eh?"

"I guess so."

* * *

That night, she slept in a pool of her own blood. It was a cold solace to remind her that she was alive, even feeling so numb. It was but a small price to pay, in the end, for keeping her virginity to herself. 

* * *

They didn't try to rape her anymore. They cut her instead. She still didn't know what they wanted her for. All she knew was that two of them came and took samples of her, muttering about snakes and regeneration. In truth, she would rather not know what they had planned for her. Still, distantly, her true self screamed to know. Even if it was bad, she craved the knowledge. 

"Not fighting no more, eh?"

Her golden eyes flickered up to him as she rose from the floor. She was not defeated. Not now.

"Good to see you're still up for punishment."

"That's not it."

He looked dumbstruck. They had her for four months, and this was her first sentence. "Oh yeah? How so?"

She bent down and pressed her hand into the blood soaking the floor. "Summoning."

A single white snake crept forth, wrapping around her body and covering what was most important. It curled around her neck and hissed darkly. From her knees, bitter hatred welled up inside her eyes, giving the golden hues a startling fire. "Forbidden Jutsu: Protective Soul!"

In an instant, Orochimaru snapped into action, ripping apart the man in the room, snarling and hissing as he did. Hearing the commotion, several others ran in. 

"So, you're the ones harming my darling child, are you?"

They froze up. Ara smiled in satisfaction before she gave into her chakra exhaustion. 

The waiting was over.

* * *

Orochimaru felt like he was going to be sick. Since her discovery of him, Ara had summoned him nearly every day. They had chatted about mundane things, like the weather. They would spar together or he would show her a jutsu that he knew and she didn't. Perhaps it was the constrictions of the jutsu, but he felt a nearly parental love for the small Sannin-to-be. He loved every part of her with the undying affection of a father. She showed him the uncorrupted love of a child for their parent.

When she didn't summon him for four months, his agitation got worse and worse. Perhaps she was done with him, had learned all she wanted. But that couldn't be it. She craved information like he had. Perhaps not with the same militancy, but with the same drive. 

If he had of had time, he would have killed each of them more gruesomely than the last. As it was, he set fire to the labs they had. Selling Uchiha DNA on the Black Market was a fight he made sure they lost. No one could harm his Ara, his precious dear child. He would even kill Sasuke or her brothers for doing her harm. 

He wanted to vomit. 

She was covered in gashes, most of them old and festering. She was ridden with disease and was too far gone for his meagre help. He didn't know why she waited as long as she did, but now she was helpless in his arms. It broke a part of him to see her this way.

Despite it all, there was only one place he could think of to go.

* * *

Sakura nearly died when the hospital doors were smashed open. A couple of nurses fainted and a doctor knocked herself out cold. 

Without her thought, chakra welled in her fists. "How the hell did you come back this time?"

Orochimaru cracked the desk with the amount of force he threw himself at it with. A thick snarl rippled up his throat and froze her blood. "Are you going to help her or not, you filthy, pink-haired she-witch?!"

"Huh?"

Orochimaru gently repositioned his charge in his arms. The singular white snake had wound itself delicately around her like a barrier against the world, but blood and puss-like fluid still dripped between the gaps. What she had originally mistaken for malevolence was, in truth, desperation. " _Help her!_ "

Sakura felt the familiar shield of her doctor side take over as she continued to panic inside. She didn't want to know how Orochimaru, who was long dead, wound up curled protectively over Sasuke's youngest. She had a job to do and a life to save.

* * *

Sasuke was surprised to see Minato waiting for him at the gates. 

"What's up?"

"Ara's been hospitalized. I'm going to take you." Minato explained, eyes hard. Sasuke nodded. The young Golden Streak took Sasuke's hand and they vanished. 

* * *

Minato's grip on his hand tightened to nearly crushing. "You make one move against this man and I've got a kunai in T&I that we're going to, understand?"

Sasuke nodded mutely, unused to seeing the young blonde man in such a state. Minato let him go.

"I had hoped never to see you again, but I suppose this was unavoidable. Shame, really. She didn't want you to know."

Sasuke looked in the room, watching as Sakura and Sakumo worked in tandem with several other doctors to remove the decaying flesh inside his daughter's wounds so she could be healed. 

"Never would be too soon. What are you doing with my daughter?"

Orochimaru sighed heavily, running his hands along his face. He looked frayed and exhausted in a way Sasuke had never seen. "Terasu created a jutsu that only she, Ara and Naruto know about. It summons a soul that is similar to that of the summoner and creates a link, similar to that of a Summon. I am her Protective Soul, as Terasu calls it. Terasu's is Neji Hyuuga."

"Why you?"

"The same reason she looks like me. We are very similar and share many interests. I should know. I've spent the most time in her company. More than the rest of your family combined."

"What the hell are you trying to say?!" Sasuke snapped, snarling in the face of his teacher. 

The snake Sannin seemed unaffected. "I'm saying that you need to realize that you have one more child that needs love and affection. You raised the other two well, but when it comes to her, you seem to forget. Itachi and Naruto spend more time with her as fathers than you do. You know that you don't need to be gone all the time on these ANBU missions of yours. Perhaps then you would know that she's an Earth nature."

"She's an Earth nature?"

"Point, meet proof."

"I'm a good father!"

"You're not the worst there is, but you shouldn't give yourself too much credit. A good father who takes ANBU missions is Shikamaru. That's a good father."

"He has Temari to care for the kids!"

"Oh? As she flits between the villages monthly?"

"That's besides the point!"

"Do you know her favourite colour?"

Sasuke looked shamefully downwards as he whispered his answer. "No."

"It's white. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because it represents  _innocence_."

Orochimaru did not comfort Sasuke when he sobbed. 

* * *

For the next two months, Orochimaru was a constant by a healing Ara's side. She was cared for by him and doted upon. No one was allowed close and the elder Sannin even followed her into lessons with Naruto. The blonde and her uncle, Itachi, were perhaps the only ones allowed to touch her, as they were the ones that arrived there first when he came. 

"I'm tired, Oro."

"Come, then. We'll get you to bed."

"When you're done, can I have a word with you?"

Orochimaru looked over his shoulder at Sasuke, who was rundown and looked broken. "Yes."

* * *

 

"What do you want?"

Sasuke sighed. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Is that all?"

Sasuke released a broken chuckle, fingering the silver band on his left hand. "She looks a lot like you, but beyond the snake getup, she got her mother's Uzumaki charm."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "Uzumaki, you say?" This was something he hadn't known.

Sasuke got paler, his face more nostalgic. "Yeah. She was Karin's sister, Ren. The woman was a saint to put up with me. She was the only person I've ever felt love so strong for, excluding my family members. She was the better half of me, and I have no qualms admitting it. I'm an asshole and particularly selfish." A small huffed laugh left him and a distant smile came to his lips as he looked at the ceiling. "With their sarcasm, Ren and Suigetsu were like siblings. Ren and Karin could not be more different."

"I don't mean to interrupt, but what ever did happen to Suigetsu?"

"Would you believe it, the Mizukage, Mei Terumi, fell for him. He'd been living here with us- Ren and I, that is -when he met her at a Kage meeting here in the Leaf. The next year they were married. He moved in with her and lives in the Mist. I take the kids up to see him on Suigetsu's birthday. They recently got a little girl. SHe looks just like him. Her name's Sava."

Orochimaru laughed lowly. "Never expected he'd wind up being the Lord of the Mizukage." 

"I doubt he did either."

"And Ren, again?"

"Ah, yes." Sasuke drifted off again and he became somber. "Ara was six months old when Ren was taken from us. She was violently murdered by Karin in a raging fit of jealousy."

Sympathy overcame the snake. "My sympathies. I didn't realize . . . "

Sasuke waved him off. "We all had an inkling, but we didn't think she was stupid enough to do it. Suigetsu ripped her throat out for it."

"Good boy, Suigetsu."

"Ara was his favourite of my children. He loved her more than the boys, even though he sword trained with both of them." Sasuke smiled. "I don't know how to compensate for Ren. It's not that I need a body in my bed, or a person to come in to clean. I don't even need another ninja partner. I've been overworking to give Ara the travelling money she needs to find the snakes and learn her Sage Arts. I want her to get confident and become the best kunoichi she can possibly be. I guess I neglected what she needed most."

"I won't deny that you did."

"Itachi and Naruto are more like parents than I am. I hate that the most. I  _want_ to know her favourite colour, to make her favourite dish for her birthday, to be there when she finally beats the shit out of the villagers for making fun of her. i don't want to miss anything, but I do."

"Do you think all those missions that Naruto gives the Sannin are for fun? Volunteer hours? Be here. She doesn't need a fund to leave. She'd got her own. She's not a baby, as much as she's a child. She's not helpless, but you have to learnt o be there when she is."

* * *

"I'm going to let you go back to the Underworld and rest, okay?"

Orochimaru nuzzled the crown of her head. "Whatever you feel is best, my darling. "

She skipped over to her father, letting his hand rustle up her hair as she grinned. "Release!"

The chakra coils that bound him to her command whisked away in the wind. 

_You are loved._

 

 

 


End file.
